Pressure mounting on state GOP boss after midterm losses

Published 10:58 pm, Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Connecticut Republican Party Chairman Jerry Labriola, Jr., during the 36th annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner at the Stamford Hilton, Stamford, Conn., Thursday night, April 10, 2014. The Connecticut Republican Party bestowed two-time U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon with its highest honor. The former wrestling executive was chosen as this year's recipient of the Prescott Bush Award, named in honor of the late Prescott Bush Sr. of Greenwich, Conn., a former U.S. Senator and father of former President George H. W. Bush. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, grandson of Prescott Bush, was the keynote speaker at the event. less

Connecticut’s top Republican is on the hot seat, with several GOP leaders publicly calling for the removal of Jerry Labriola Jr. as state party chairman after a slate of candidates got shut out again in the midterm election, including in the governor’s race.

If there was ever a year candidates at the top of the GOP ticket had the political wind at their backs, the consensus among Labriola’s critics was that this was it.

All they have to do is look to other reliably blue states such as Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois, which elected Republican governors on Nov. 4, or to the U.S. Senate, which flipped to GOP control.

But while their conservative brethren in the rest of the country basks in the afterglow of their gains, Republicans in Connecticut are mired in a drought that extends to 2006, which is when a GOP candidate last won the governor’s race (M. Jodi Rell) or a congressional seat (Christopher Shays).

The fall guy for a restless faction of Republicans is Labriola, who multiple people speaking on the condition of anonymity say got so caught up in the social aspects and the perks of being party chairman that it undermined his credibility.